


Happiness Begins

by northofthehouse



Category: EXO (Band), K-pop, 방탄소년단 | Bangtan Boys | BTS
Genre: Adoption, Age Difference, Cute Kids, Father-Son Relationship, Fluff, Friendship, Hopeful Ending, Kid Fic, M/M, Pets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-16
Updated: 2019-09-16
Packaged: 2020-10-19 21:21:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20663966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/northofthehouse/pseuds/northofthehouse
Summary: "Well, call me crazyAnd people saying that we move too fastBut I've been waiting, and for a reasonAin’t no turning back"-Happiness Begins, Jonas Brothers





	Happiness Begins

**Author's Note:**

> Hi lovely OP! I hope you like this. It's short and sweet, but I tried my best to stick to your prompt! I'm like incredibly incapable of writing slow burn though, so I'm sorry if you were hoping for that. Enjoy!

If his son wasn’t adopted, Baekhyun would swear that a deep and overwhelming love of animals was a hereditary Byun family trait. Sadly, he can’t help but blame nurture (versus nature) in this case, since it’s his and Taehyung’s shared love of dogs that have them up early and heading to the animal shelter on one of their precious few days off together. Baekhyun had tried to put his foot down—they already had Mongryong and did  _ not _ need the vet bills that came with owning another dog—but there’s this face Taehyung makes when he wants something and Baekhyun is weak, okay?

“What’re you going to name it?” Baekhyun asks his son as they sit side-by-side on the bus. They’ve only got one stop to go and Baekhyun’s desperate for anything to keep the two-year-old occupied.

“Dog,” Taehyung replies promptly, as though he’s thought about this extensively and Dog is the only acceptable choice.

Baekhyun nods, having expected this, and says, “Dog is a great idea, Tae! I’m sure our new friend will really love it. How do you feel about giving it a second name, though, just in case you call it and Mongryong gets confused?”

Taehyung furrows his little forehead and purses his lips, considering. (It’s too cute and Baekhyun’s non-existent ovaries are exploding.)

“Okay,” he eventually agrees, after Baekhyun assures his son that he can still call their new pet Dog even if it has another name.

“Just like I call you My Baby V or how Grandma calls you Taehyungie,” Baekhyun explains as they exit the bus hand-in-hand. He tells Taehyung that these are called nicknames and that people use them sometimes to show that they really love someone. Taehyung accepts this explanation, though Baekhyun’s not sure how much his son has absorbed of their conversation. He is only two, after all.

When Baekhyun points out the shelter, at Taehyung’s request, the toddler practically starts vibrating in excitement. He has his arms bent toward his chest and his hands clenched into tiny fists that look harmless but aren’t. (Baekhyun knows this from experience, having been smacked in the face more than once by his sleeping child who’d had a bad dream and insisted on spending the rest of the night in his father’s bed.)

“Are you so excited, buddy?” Baekhyun asks, chuckling at Taehyung’s reaction as they enter the shelter. They haven’t even seen any of the animals yet. Still, Taehyung’s answering nod is enthusiastic and his eyes are enormous as he stares at the man behind the reception desk.

“Hello!” The man greets with a broad smile that transforms his face from modelesque to adorable in an instant. Baekhyun is mesmerized.

It gets worse (for Baekhyun’s heart and...other things) when the man comes out from behind the desk, crouches down in front of Taehyung, and asks in a conspiratorial stage whisper “Are you here to play with the puppies?”

Taehyung nods, eyes still impossibly wide, and murmurs “Puppies” reverently. The man stands up then and, to Baekhyun, says, “Um, I hope that was okay. That I talked to him first. He seems really excited.”

The man looks flustered and is possibly embarrassed, if the hand at the back of his neck and the hesitancy in his speech are any indication. Baekhyun is impossibly endeared by this, and quickly waves the man off.

“It’s no problem,” he says, pausing expectantly so the man can share his name.

“Um, Jongin. I’m Jongin,” he answers after a beat, flustered again.

Baekhyun smiles at Jongin, gently, like he would at Taehyung when he’s being especially sweet.

“It’s no problem, Jongin,” Baekhyun repeats. “Thank you for going out of your way to make our visit special today. And yes, Taehyung and I are looking for a dog, aren’t we, Baby V?”

Taehyung takes this as his obvious cue to join the conversation and starts to tell Jongin about Mongryong. “Yesterday,” he begins.

“It was last year,” Baekhyun whispers under his breath to a very amused Jongin.

“Yesterday,” Taehyung repeats, louder, “Grandma sent us a puppy in the mail!”

Jongin looks appropriately impressed at Taehyung’s story, but his raised eyebrow is a clear request for clarification.

“My mom lives in Daegu and sometimes can’t be here for birthdays and such,” Baekhyun explains softy once Taehyung spots some children’s books about animals in the corner of the room and runs off to investigate. He smiles lovingly in Taehyung’s direction and continues, “She sends all of Tae’s gifts in the mail and since he knows getting Mongryong was her idea, he probably connected the two.”

Jongin laughs, loudly and uninhibited, and Baekhyun’s enthralled again. Jongin is almost too beautiful to look at, and Baekhyun’s stupidly charmed by the other man’s dorky laughter. It makes Jongin more real and less like a figment of Baekhyun’s permanently (because parent of a toddler) exhausted and coffee-fueled brain.

Jongin’s laughter peters off and Baekhyun finds himself staring as the other man stares back. Their gazes linger on one another for an extended moment and only Taehyung’s impatient “Dad!” brings Baekhyun back to reality.

“Dad!” Taehyung repeats. “Can we go find Dog now? He misses me a lot.”

Jongin chuckles and crouches down to be on Taehyung’s level again. “You’re totally right, Taehyung,” he tells the toddler seriously. “Dog probably misses you a lot. Should we go look for him?”

He’s speaking to Taehyung but the question is directed toward Baekhyun who nods and takes his son’s hand.

“Onward!” he shouts, thrusting his free hand into the air in a fist. Taehyung copies his father and cheers when Jongin does the same.

“There he is!” Taehyung cheers again some moments later, after the three of them have walked past quite a few animals and Taehyung has rejected each one. “Hi Dog!” he greets through his giggles as his new friend sniffs his hand cautiously and then begins to lick his face with abandon.

“That’s Yeontan,” Jongin tells Baekhyun. “He’s the sweetest and very friendly. I’m sure he’ll get along well with your other dog.”

“Can I call you if we have trouble?” Baekhyun asks, trying to be smooth and cursing himself for failing at it. “I mean the shelter,” he corrects, rambling but unable to stop. “Does the shelter have like a number or?”

He trails off but Jongin seems to understand and answers earnestly, “Of course! There’s understandably a transition period with any new addition to a home, but I’m sure he’ll fit right in. And, if you do have any problems, you can definitely give me a call!” He stops speaking abruptly and his cheeks flush. “Err, the shelter. I’ll give you the number.”

Baekhyun smiles and thanks him.

“And my number too,” Jongin adds hesitantly after a moment. “Just in case.”

Baekhyun’s smile grows even bigger.

Once they bring him home, Yeontan fits in with Baekhyun’s family as well as Jongin thought he would.

This is great, in theory, but it is also terrible, mostly because now Baekhyun has no real excuse to use Jongin’s number. He mulls over this problem for a couple of days, but eventually decides to put the whole encounter behind him and move on.

Jongin probably isn’t interested in being hit on by an old man with a kid anyway.

“Don’t talk about yourself like that,” Kyungsoo huffs, exasperated. “You’re barely 30, and Taehyung’s not bad, for a tiny human. You’re a catch, really.”

Baekhyun coos and tries to pinch his friend’s cheeks but his hand is smacked away at the last minute. “Aw, Soo,” he says, “you  _ do _ care about me!”

“Your kid is cute,” Kyungsoo responds immediately, his voice totally deadpan. “Without Taehyung, you’re useless to me. Also I’ve known you since grade school. At this point it’s simply too much effort to find a new friend.”

“Ah,” Baekhyun nods knowingly. “So it’s not that you care about me, it’s just that Taehyungie is precious and the only one who gets to insult me is you?”

Kyungsoo hums agreeably and Baekhyun laughs.

“I love you too, Soo,” he says, and their conversation moves on.

Jongin remains a mostly forgotten daydream to Baekhyun for nearly a month and it’s Taehyung, actually, who brings him back onto the Byun-family radar.

“Dad,” Taehyung tells Baekhyun one day over breakfast, “Yeontan misses his old house. We have to go back so he can visit.”

Baekhyun pretends to think about it, but he’s already decided that a return visit to the shelter is a great idea. He says as much to his son, who smiles happily back at him with a few stray grains of rice stuck to his cheek.

“We have to say thank you to Mr. Jongin too, Dad,” Taehyung reminds him seriously.

“Of course, of course,” Baekhyun agrees quickly, now eager to get everyone ready and out of the house as soon as possible. He lets Taehyung pick out his own clothes while he finishes his breakfast standing in the doorway of Taehyung’s room. Once they’re both fed and dressed, Baekhyun begs a ride off Kyungsoo and both father and son wait impatiently for the 20 minutes it takes him to come pick them up.

“You owe me big for this, Byun Baekhyun,” Kyungsoo grumbles, still apparently half-asleep at 10 in the morning on a Saturday. “I sacrificed morning sex for you.”

Baekhyun is appreciative of his friend’s sacrifice, but also scandalized at Kyungsoo’s lack of filter around his own godson. He squawks and rushes to cover Taehyung’s ears, but he’s too late.

It’s okay, though, because Taehyung’s not even listening to them anyway; he’s too busy talking to Yeontan who’s on a pillow in the backseat of Kyungsoo’s SUV and won’t stop whining about it.

“Oh thank God,” Kyungsoo says, exhaling heavily in relief as he pulls up in front of the shelter and they can finally let Yeontan out. “The whining was killing me.”

“Imagine how he feels about yours,” Baekhyun comments cheekily.

Kyungsoo’s answering expression is distinctly unimpressed. Baekhyun thinks that was pretty clever, as comebacks go, but apparently not. Still, he laughs about it under his breath while he releases Taehyung from his carseat, and he’s still laughing about it as they walk into the shelter together.

“You’re really not that funny,” Kyungsoo whispers. “No wonder Jongin never called you.”

“He didn’t give me his number, actually,” a familiar voice responds. “That’s really why I didn’t call.”

Kyungsoo mutters something that sounds like “Semantics,” but Baekhyun isn’t listening. In fact, he stopped listening to his friend the moment he realized Jongin was in the room.

Taehyung, of course, Baekhyun always listens to, and so, apparently does Jongin. He hears the boy’s shyly uttered “Thank you for Yeontan, Mr. Jongin,” and crouches down to speak with Taehyung on his level. The gesture is just as precious and adorable this time as it was the time before, and Baekhyun thinks he might pass out from cuteness overload.

Kyungsoo says, to Baekhyun, “You’re an idiot. Cuteness overload is not a thing.” When Baekhyun gapes at him, shocked at his friend’s sudden mind-reading abilities, Kyungsoo adds, “Yes, you said that out loud.”

A blushing Jongin says, to Taehyung, “You’re welcome, little guy. I’m glad you love him as much as I do.”

To Baekhyun, he says, “You never called me either.” He sounds a little sad, but somehow not at all accusatory, and Baekhyun likes him even more.

Kyungsoo, sensing the mood and choosing to be helpful for once, calls Taehyung’s attention to some kittens in the window. They take Yeontan with them and soon it’s just Baekhyun and Jongin, standing close and looking at each other.

“I’m not young,” Baekhyun tells Jongin simply.

Jongin waves a hand like that doesn’t matter to him.

“And I have a kid,” Baekhyun adds.

Jongin grins and points toward the back of the shelter where the rescue animals live. “I have lots of kids,” he answers, his expression smug.

Baekhyun’s startled into laughter and teases, “You were just waiting to use that line, weren’t you?”

Jongin shrugs like he doesn’t know what Baekhyun’s talking about, but the flush of pink across his cheeks gives him away.

“It’s okay,” Baekhyun assures the younger man. “It’s cute that you’ve thought about this.”

Jongin looks affronted at this statement, and Baekhyun is quick to apologize for assuming Jongin is careless.

“I want you to look at me and see an equal,” Jongin shares shyly. “I’m not some young guy looking for a summer fling, you know.”

Baekhyun hums as he considers this. He’s tempted to tease Jongin again, but he’s pleasantly surprised by the honesty of the other’s confession.

Jongin  _ is _ young though, and that’s not exactly something Baekhyun can overlook, not when Jongin deserves so much more than what single-father Baekhyun can give. He’s about to argue this point further when Kyungsoo, now seated on the floor with his back against the window and his lap full of a dozing toddler and dog, interrupts.

“Oh for the love of--it’s not like you’re getting married!” Kyungsoo exclaims, clearly exasperated. “Just get dinner already, jeez.”

He pauses, then makes an expression like he’s in pain. “I’ll even,” he grimaces, “babysit.”

Jongin and Baekhyun both laugh at Kyungsoo’s dramatics, but Baekhyun is quick to make the most of the opportunity before his friend changes his mind.

The first thing he does is give Jongin his number. “In case I chicken out again,” he says.

The next thing he does is ask Jongin to have dinner with him. “I eat a standard dinner of either mac and cheese or dino chicken with green beans, so I can’t promise anything fancy, but would you like to go out to dinner with me, Jongin?”

Jongin, practically beaming, agrees.

Taehyung, now solidly asleep on Kyungsoo’s lap, snuggles closer to Yeontan. Baekhyun looks from his family to his new chance at love and thinks,  _ I could get used to this. _

**Author's Note:**

> They fall in love, eventually do get married, and live happily ever after with Taehyung and a whole pack of doggos. Obviously.
> 
> Also, if anyone cares, and as requested, Kyungsoo is dating Sehun and they live together. #ishipit
> 
> Hope you liked it!


End file.
